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Report: FBI Fought Harsh Detainee Tactics

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The New York Times

Published: May 21, 2008

WASHINGTON - In 2002, as evidence of prisoner mistreatment at Guantanamo Bay began to mount, FBI agents at the base created a "war crimes file" to document accusations against American military personnel, but were eventually ordered to close the file, a Justice Department report disclosed Tuesday.

The report, an exhaustive, 437-page review prepared by the Justice Department inspector general, provides the fullest account to date of internal dissent and confusion within the Bush administration over the use of harsh interrogation tactics by the military and the Central Intelligence Agency.

In one of several previously undisclosed episodes, the report found that American military interrogators appeared to have collaborated with visiting Chinese officials at Guantanamo Bay to disrupt the sleep of Chinese Muslims held there, waking them up every 15 minutes the night before their interviews by the Chinese. In another incident, it said, a female interrogator reportedly bent back an inmate's thumbs and squeezed his genitals as he grimaced in pain.

The report describes what one official called "trench warfare" between the FBI and the military over the rough methods being used on detainees in Guantanamo Bay, Afghanistan and Iraq.

The report says that the FBI agents took their concerns to higher-ups, but that their concerns often fell on deaf ears. Officials at senior levels at the FBI, the Justice Department, the Defense Department and the National Security Council were all made aware of the agents' complaints, but little appears to have been done as a result.

The report quotes passionate objections from FBI officials who grew increasingly concerned about the reports of practices such as intimidating inmates with snarling dogs, parading them in the nude before female soldiers, or "short-shackling" them to the floor for many hours in extreme heat or cold.

Such tactics, said one FBI agent in an e-mail to supervisors in November 2002, might violate American law banning torture.

More senior officials, including Spike Bowman, who was then the head of the FBI's national security law unit, tried to sound the alarm as well.

Inspector General Glenn Fine found that in a few instances, FBI agents participated in interrogations using tactics that would not have been permitted inside the United States, but the "vast majority" of agents "separated themselves" from harsh treatment, the report says.

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